Entrepreneurs face every day the dilemmas arising from limited resources. The pressures to decide in favour of short-term advantages. One man's long-term vision can change the course of history

Whenever you move to a new job, chances are that you will have to spend
the initial months clearing up the mess left behind by your predecessor.
Resources are always limited, in particular time, and your new position
might require you to make some tough decisions. Will you maintain the
old routines or will you take the risk of antagonizing your colleagues
and subordinates?

Entrepreneurs face every day the dilemmas arising from limited resources

Actually, the choice between proven systems and risky innovation has to
be made by every person in business, often on the basis of incomplete
information. When college students pick up their major subject of study,
how many of them have a clear picture of the long-term consequences?

Around
the year 70 B.C., Andronicus of Rhodes was elected head of the Lyceum,
the school that had been founded by Aristotle in Athens two centuries
before. After taking over his new responsibilities, Andronicus must have
made an inventory of the assets and liabilities of the Lyceum and
concluded that the school was in a sorry state.The most difficult decision of Andronicus' life

Diodorus had been
the head of the Lyceum during the preceding decades. Despite his
efforts, the school had progressively lost ground to its main
competitor, the Academy founded by Plato. Shortly after Andronicus
became head of the Lyceum, the Roman legions invaded Greece and the
economic situation in Athens turned from bad to worse.

A few
years later, the state of affairs had barely improved and Andronicus was
faced with the most difficult decision of his life. The implications
were so far-ranging that no one could have foreseen all consequences.
The Lyceum was going through difficult times, which called for swift
action and strong leadership.

For Andronicus, there were two
choices. On the one side, he could concentrate all resources on
expanding the school curriculum in order to attract new students from
Greece, Rome, Libya, and Egypt. On the other side, he could devote the
available manpower to compile and edit the works of Aristotle, whose
manuscripts were rapidly deteriorating and risked being lost forever.The pressures to decide in favour
of short-term advantages

Although
the Lyceum was not a modern corporation listed in the stock market, we
should not underestimate the pressures on Andronicus to decide in favour
of short-term advantages. Suffice to say than in the preceding two
hundred years, under much better economic conditions, no one had
undertaken the task of editing and compiling Aristotle's works.

Luckily,
Andronicus of Rhodes took the long-term view and decided to concentrate
the Lyceum resources on producing a compilation of Aristotle's
writings. You might not know that, by the time they began their task,
already half of Aristotle's manuscripts had been rendered illegible by
decay or eaten up by worms.Assumptions can
prove catastrophically wrong

The compilation of Aristotle's
writings made in the Lyceum under Andronicus' supervision consisted of
47 books. In addition, about thirty books by Aristotle available at that
time were left out of the compilation, possibly considering that, since
they were so many copies in circulation of those other thirty books,
there was little risk of them disappearing.

That assumption
proved catastrophically wrong, since with the passage of time, all other
works of Aristotle have been irrecoverably lost. The last copies of
those other Aristotle's manuscripts may have burned down in the fire of
the Alexandrian Library, together with many other writings of Antiquity.One man's long-term vision can change the
course of history

In
our days, few students realize that, when they study Aristotle's ideas,
they are mostly relying on Andronicus of Rhodes as historical source.
In fact, a good part of what we consider Aristotle's works might have
been written by Andronicus himself or by one of his colleagues in the
Lyceum.

Had Andronicus not undertaken the arduous task of editing
and compiling dozens of disparate manuscripts written by Aristotle,
later centuries would have taken a different path, no doubt, for the
worse. As it frequently happens, one man's long-term vision changed the
course of History.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN VESPASIAN is the author of eight books about rational living, including "When Everything Fails, Try This" (2009), "Rationality Is the Way to Happiness" (2009), "The Philosophy of Builders: How to Build a Great Future with the Pieces from Your Past" (2010), "The 10 Principles of Rational Living" (2012), "Rational Living, Rational Working: How to Make Winning Moves When Things Are Falling Apart" (2013), "Consistency: The Key to Permanent Stress Relief" (2014), "On Becoming Unbreakable: How Normal People Become Extraordinarily Self-Confident" (2015), and "Thriving in difficult times: Twelve lessons from Ancient Greece to improve your life today" (2016).